What will next year be like?
I used to think that everything depended on the November election. Aside from politics,
my life would be much the same. My pension and Social Security would keep
rolling in. My children would keep working as their little children slowly grew
up. My town would remain unchanged, offering the same amusements and shopping
and restaurants. My friends would still be there for me and me for them,
whether we hugged or sent emails. The world would continue to deteriorate
towards a climate crisis, but slowly, one species, one more storm or drought,
one flood at a time.
I was not naive, but I was
wrong. Everything will be different.
Well, not everything. Unless
this catastrophe is even bigger than I can imagine, my retirement funds will
remain the same. But there will be much less to spend them on. The restaurants
we like, local family establishments, will be decimated. The one coffee shop in
town may be gone, along with the one bookstore, the donut shop that isn’t
Dunkin, and other family businesses that could not survive months without
revenue. The national and international chains that offer the same processed
foods, the same bland products, the same standardized greetings and sales, will
take up even more of our economic space.
Our social contract might be
broken. I mean the unspoken contract to just keep going and keep funneling
money upwards between the very rich who make most of the financial decisions
and the masses who barely get by. Who knows what that might mean? An uprising
of the no-longer-getting-by, but in which direction? Towards stronger unions,
higher minimum wages, better health care, a fairer tax system? Or more
nationalism, more division, more demagoguery, more escape into guns and narrow
religiosity and hate?
I don’t think that our
current isolation will prove so attractive that everyone will continue to stay
inside, reduce all communication to the virtual, fall deeper into the rabbit
hole of the computer/smart phone/tablet. But the younger generations, already
used to ignoring the world to stare at pixels, may become even more isolated
from reality.
Will we be inspired by the
selflessness of the first responders, newly online teachers, and other
caregivers to value them more, with something more than 7 PM applause? Will we
realize that buying new things to replace the nearly new things bought
yesterday doesn’t improve anything but the bottom line of the people who are
telling us every day that we need new things to make our lives better? Will we
trust scientists and doctors and professors more and conmen and professional
liars less?
Will we prepare ourselves
more thoughtfully for the next crisis or the unfathomable climate disaster? Or
just breathe a sign of relief that we made it through this one, and go back to
listening to the loud-mouthed know-it-alls, whose confidence never dims, but
whose stories change every day?
Will we demand a health care
system that really tries to keep everyone healthy? Or go back to rationing
health care by income, by race, and by geography, kept in place by a political
system that rations power and votes the same way?
Will politicians still be
able to harvest votes by repeating ad nauseum that America is the greatest
country on earth, pointing to their flag pins, while we mourn all those people
who died because America wasn’t even close to the best at dealing with a global
crisis?
What will be the new normal?
America changed after the
Great Depression into a better America, where government tried to alleviate
widespread economic suffering with programs that still didn’t do enough, but
that many people today say we should reject. America changed after the crises
of inequality of the 1960s, with programs against inequality that those same
people today say we should reject. The voices that are being raised and will be
raised about inequality, unfairness, and oligarchy will be countered by those same
voices who use the word “great” to mean “shut up”, who meet facts about
suffering with hatred, who wave guns at people in distress. Who will win?
If some of this language
seems strong, look at the news story on the FOX News website about the
possibility that Stacy Abrams will be Joe Biden’s pick for vice president. The
story itself is unremarkable, much like the reporting on other media websites.
What is notable are the
comments. Open racism, attention to her body, more racism. These are the
people who rely on FOX and love Trump. Perhaps not representative of all of
those people, but still a lot of people who feel confirmed in their ugly
prejudices by FOX and Trump and the Republican Party.
A NY Times reporter
interviewed 20 experts about the long-term effects of the pandemic, but his
article is still short on clarity about what the future will look like. Only
one thing is clear – recovery to “normal life” will take a long time, well
beyond the end of 2020.
An effective vaccine would be
the magic bullet to end the danger of further infection. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, who has been functioning as Trump’s main medical advisor and
explainer, has repeatedly said that a vaccine will take at least a year to 18
months. His job as Trump’s mouthpiece is to be optimistic: the Times article is
gloomier: “All the experts familiar with vaccine production agreed that that
timeline was optimistic.” Dr. Harvey V.
Fineberg, former president of the National Academy of Medicine, said, “We face
a doleful future.”
Because of the mounting
pressure to open up our shut-down society, it is likely that the virus will
again spread in spots, leading again to shutdowns. We are likely to experience
two years of openings and closings, unwarranted optimism and new peaks of
death, accompanied by politically motivated arguments about what to do.
There are many hopeful
predictions of permanent social, economic and political changes in the wake of
this shock. More willingness to believe science, which could mean more
willingness to tackle climate change. More attention to the economic
inequalities which have led to very different death rates between black and
white, rich and poor, which could mean more political will to attack those
inequalities. The sudden overloading of our health care system might make
universal health insurance more popular. Less pleasant are the possibilities
that the psychological burdens of isolation on vulnerable families may lead to
more domestic abuse, depression, and suicide.
An old
Chinese saying goes something like this: “It’s better to be a dog in a
peaceful time, than be a man in a chaotic period.” Neither dogs nor men can
determine whether the times they live in are peaceful or chaotic. But we, men
and women, can influence how we come out of this chaos.
I was wrong. It’s not about
November. November will be merely a clue about the future of our country and
our lives. As for what that future will be like, at the moment I haven’t a
clue.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
April 21, 2020
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